In previous posts I have described my way to use the new spatial data types that come with SQL Server 2008. As shown in these posts ( and ) there is a little bit of work to make this run smoothly.
The other day I started to search for an alternative way to get rid of the dataset designer and the problems with UDTs (User Defined Types) and I bumped into the BLToolkit. This toolkit is a set of components to use when accessing data from a couple of providers, such as SQL Server. I looked at their tutorial and I liked what I saw. No dataset designer involved, just pure C# code and a couple of configuration settings and the work is done!
I will show how to use the spatial data types with BLToolkit, by presenting an extension of the toolkit to make the data access involving the new types a piece of cake. I have added a new attribute class to the toolkit making this possible.